


Halfway between Helmand and Holby

by travellinggiraffe



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Kiev, Not Berena!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8476465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travellinggiraffe/pseuds/travellinggiraffe
Summary: Bernie accepted the secondment in Kiev to escape from the possiblity of something with Serena and feelings she hasn't dealt with. The last thing she expected was for her past to catch up with.





	

“Miss Wolfe.” She was greeted by an older man with a receding hair line. “Welcome to the Ukraine.”  
“Thank you, and please, call me Bernie,” she replied.  
“Andriy,” as they shook hands.  
Bernie followed Andriy round as he gave her a tour of the facility and explained what they were trying to achieve with the new unit.  
“I have someone I want you to meet, she is also British, I think you will like her. This is…”  
“Alex,” Bernie said, freezing to the spot she was in.

Bernie felt like her world had stopped. Here she was, stood in a Trauma unit in Kiev of all places staring at this beautiful woman who used to be her best friend, who she used to be in love with, who it turned out right now she was still very much in love with.  
“Hi Bern,” Alex greeted her politely.  
“You two know each other?” Andriy asked.  
“Yes,” Alex replied seeing Bernie wasn’t going to be able to string sentences together. “We’ve worked together previously.”  
“I see,” Andriy acknowledged.

Bernie’s first day passed by in a blur. A combination of plenty to take in, teaching and emotions. It was so much of a blur in fact that Alex found her in her rather empty office, absorbed in what she was doing well past the end of the day.  
“Now, you always were dedicated to your job, but are you giving up for the day?” Alex mildly teased. Bernie looked up from her computer in a confused manner.  
“It’s almost 7.30 Bern, everyone else went home hours ago,” Alex prompted.  
“I hadn’t realised the time,” Bernie attempted to make her excuses.  
“Where are you staying?” Alex asked.  
“A rather none descript hotel not far from here,” Bernie replied.  
“Do you fancy coming for a drink?” Alex asked genuinely. “I remember what evenings were like sitting in an empty, hotel room, week after week.”  
“I don’t know.” Bernie was apprehensive. “Is that a good idea?”  
“Just two colleagues having a drink after work. Much like you would do in Holby I guess? Much like we did in Kabul,” she said tentatively.  
“It would be nice to get out of the hotel room I must admit,” Bernie conceded.  
“And you have to eat. Let’s just go for some food and a drink. Not only will you get conversation, but you get it in English,” Alex promoted.  
“Okay, okay I concede. It sounds good. Let’s go,” Bernie finally agreed.

It was just like old times. Though the food and drink were a significant improvement on the army mess tent. There was even wine!  
“Do you miss the Army?” Bernie asked.  
“Sort of. I would say it’s good not to be away and to be able to put down some roots in one place for a change but I am here, so I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me.”  
“And you would be correct,” Bernie agreed. “How did you end up here?”  
“It was recommended to me by our commanding officer. Apparently, the Army had been offered the opportunity to help but turned it down for whatever reason. But the CO thought of me and gave me the information as he knew I didn’t want to stay in the army long ter,” Alex explained. “It seemed like a good opportunity. Plus, it gave me chance to clear my head, work out what I want out of life going forward.”  
Bernie looked down into her wine glass. She knew she was responsible for a lot of the pain Alex felt and she felt terrible about it.  
“Hey,” Alex said looking at a downcast Bernie, “Bern, look at me. I wasn’t having a dig at you. You know as well as I do that fitting into civilian life after being in the Army for so many years is hard. I didn’t really feel like I knew how or where I was supposed to be. Being here has given me chance to work some of that out, without judgement of being odd. The Ukrainians would have thought of me as odd whatever I did.”  
Bernie chuckled. “You, odd? Never!” Bernie teased.  
“Oi!” Alex gave back flicking her napkin at Bernie.  
“What about you? How have you ended up in the Ukraine?” Alex asked after a pause.  
“It’s a secondment. Hanssen offered to me saying he couldn’t think of anyone more perfect for the role.” Bernie explained.  
“Well he’s not wrong about that,” Alex agreed. “When I saw that it was you who was coming I couldn’t have thought of a more perfect person either.”  
“Thanks,” Bernie smiled.  
“Do you want to know the real reason I’m in Kiev?” Bernie asked.  
“Only if you want to tell me,” Alex said, giving her the opt out. After all it wasn’t really any of her business any more.  
“Running. Running away, like a coward, just like I did with you,” Bernie said sadly.  
“Running from what?” Alex asked gently.  
“A colleague, a friend, a…. I’m not actually sure any more,” Bernie admitted.  
“But it all got misinterpreted, which wasn’t what I wanted or intended at all. So I was a coward…again and I ran.”  
Bernie lowered her gaze to look into her wine glass. She was imagining the disapproving look Alex was giving her, the oh so nothing has really changed at all look. Bernie couldn’t deal with that right now. Alex wasn’t pulling the face Bernie was imagining at all. She was secretly a little glad she ran away from whoever this colleague was, as it meant she got to see Bernie again.  
“Hey, Bern, if you ever need an ear, I am always here,” Alex offered. She might be mad at how Bernie treated her, but they needed to work together so if she needed a friend, Alex could be that person.  
“Thanks,” Bernie said with a smile.  
There was a pause, though not awkward, just neither really knowing what to say next.  
“I guess I should go,” Bernie finally broke the silence. “It’s getting late and we have plenty of work to do tomorrow.”  
“Yes, we do.”  
“Thank you for dragging me out. It was better than sitting in my hotel room with a takeaway.”  
“No problem. See you tomorrow.”  
“Yes, good night” Bernie said before walking away. She wanted so much to give Alex a good night hug or a kiss. But she knew she couldn’t. So, it was easier to just walk away completely.

Bernie lay on her bed in the hotel staring at the ceiling. Her brain felt like mush. She had taken the secondment, if she was honest, as an excuse to run away. To run away from a situation that she felt she was in way over her head. It was an excuse to work out what she wanted. Never did she imagine that her past would catch up with her. Especially not in Kiev. Seeing Alex had thrown her completely. The last time she had seen her she had broken Alex’s heart and Alex had quite rightly walked away. But with the ultimatum to get in touch if she worked out what she wanted. That conversation had prompted her to end things with Marcus. The day Alex walked away Bernie was prepared to do whatever it took in order to be with Alex.

However, ‘something’ had developed between her and Serena. She wasn’t even sure how to describe it. They were good friends and colleagues. And then Cameron pointed out one day how Bernie looked at Serena in the same way as she had once looked at Alex and Bernie had then questioned whether there was anything in it. But she had done it again. She got scared, ended up in something she wasn’t sure she wanted and had taken the cowards way out, and now here she was sat in a hotel room in Kiev. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Serena, but she wasn’t sure how she felt either.

Sitting on the floor in that theatre that evening, after Fletch’s surgery, kissing Serena had seemed like the right thing to do. It was a reaction to the situation, the stress and the emotion of the day. Bernie needed comfort, reassurance and to feel wanted in that moment and kissing Serena had been that outlet. But after the first couple of weeks of awkwardness following that evening, Serena seemed to have accepted what happened, how it changed her and what she wanted going forward. Her implied declaration of feelings so soon after that first kiss had astounded Bernie. How could she be so okay with it? How did she know what she wanted? How did she know it was real? Bernie had been in a relationship with Alex for over two years by the time the IED hit and she still couldn’t work out who she was and what she wanted?

Their kiss the day she accepted the secondment had been amazing, Bernie certainly couldn’t deny that, but it felt as though they were moving too quickly. Like Serena had decided what she wanted and assumed that Bernie wanted the same, despite them not actually having had that conversation. So, Bernie had used the secondment as an excuse, an escape. Time to work out what she wanted, who she was, and what and who she wanted in her future. But many, no doubt including Serena, would describe it as the coward’s way out.

But now she was here, and she had seen Alex again for the first time in months, things were beginning to clear, to make sense again. Part of the reason Bernie had taken the secondment was she couldn’t lead Serena on, having not dealt with her thoughts and feelings for Alex. Yes she had left Marcus, but as Alex had wisely told her last time she had seen her, that’s what you don’t want. She needed to work out what she did want. When Alex had first said it she thought that it was complete rubbish. Surely knowing what you don’t want meant you knew what you wanted. But as time went on she realised what Alex meant. Bernie knew she had needed to deal with what had happened between them, how she felt, about herself, their relationship, about Alex, their past if they were to have any chance of being a couple again in the future. However instead, Bernie had thrown herself into her work at Holby, spent very little time at home and even less consumed inside her own head. Which in turn had probably lead to her getting in whatever it was that had happened between her and Serena.

Not dealing with her feelings about Alex and their relationship had got Bernie into this mess in the first place, so she needed to get her head round it, here, in the present, alone in this hotel room in Kiev. It was time to work everything out once and for all. Seeing Alex had certainly helped start the process. Bernie was beginning to realise what she really wanted, that she was brave enough to be that person. She wanted to be with Alex and she could see that now. She could see that there was a difference between what you think you want and being brave enough to live as that person, whatever people’s opinions of your choice might be. Thinking you want someone but not being able to commit to what they want or what they deserve isn’t knowing what you want. Living in their little bubble in Kabul, had been wonderful but it wasn’t ‘real’. The feelings were real, or at least they felt more real than anything Bernie had ever felt before. But they were living this lie, keeping this secret, in this world that was far from civilian normality and realising she would have to tell the truth back in her ‘normal life’, Bernie it completely freaked her out.

Now however, having been outed at work by a patient, which in turn lead to Marcus finding out, and Cameron who’d worked it out for himself, it didn’t feel anywhere near as scary. It was like someone had released the valve, let out all the pressure that was stopping her being who and what she wanted to be. The more Bernie thought about it the more she thought she had probably always been gay. But she came from a strong military family where that wouldn’t have been acceptable, where she had already been given a mould and expected to conform. And once she was in the army too, there was no way that anything she thought she felt towards women could be explored. So she married Marcus, the man she’d met at university, who she was quite fond of. She thought at the time maybe that was what love was. It didn’t feel perfect or quite right but she wasn’t sure what would and it kept her family happy. But now, she knew who she was, who she wanted to be going forward, and what she wanted. Lying in her empty hotel room, staring up a ceiling full of brown stains, all she could think about was Alex. And how stupid she had been ever treating her as anything other than amazing and why an earth did she let her walk away. She needed to make this right, she needed her best friend back, she wanted to be lying curled up in her arms, and she realised now she was brave enough to do that.

The mulling over of the situation with Alex, her feelings and their relationship carried on in Bernie’s head the next couple of weeks. It was a Thursday when she finally felt sure enough about how she felt that she decided she needed to talk to Alex, explain, tell her the truth, and hope that she hadn’t left it too long and she hadn’t messed it up beyond repair.  
Tonight, the tides had turned when Bernie went searching for Alex. This time she had found Alex burning the midnight oil in her office. She would have asked whether Alex had a home to go to but she wasn’t sure either of them could say what home was after not being in one place for any length of time. Instead Bernie stood in the doorway of the office and watched her colleague as she worked. Bernie had forgotten just how beautiful she was. She had often watched her work when they were in Afghanistan and was always in awe of how beautiful and calm she looked even on the hottest, most stressful of days. After watching her for a while, Alex seemingly completely unaware of Bernie’s presence, Bernie cleared her throat, alerting Alex without making her jump.  
“Hey,” Alex smiled at the sight of her colleague.  
“So I’m not the only one avoiding going back to an empty hotel room then?” Bernie teased following their conversation a couple of weeks ago.  
“How do you think I know how miserable it is being there by yourself?”  
“Fair enough,” Bernie conceded. “Do you fancy a drink?”  
Alex looked up with a smile. As much as she was in love with Bernie it was lovely to have their friendship back, so a drink sounded like music to her ears.  
“I think we need to talk,” Bernie stated, putting a sense of dread back into Alex.

They were both on their second glass of wine in a small bar in the centre of Kiev. They were sat in a both towards the back of the bar, not that it was overly busy, it being a week night.  
“I wasn’t that bad,” Bernie protested amongst the banter between them.  
“Not that bad?” Alex queried, “I remember multiple occasions finding you asleep in an empty theatre in the medical centre with your head on an anatomy book, or you crawling into your bunk at some stupidly late hour of the night and still be up before me in the morning. You’re a workaholic.”  
“I love what I do. What’s wrong with that?”  
“You are so in love with your job, you’ve forgotten how to have a life, how to love other things, people,” Alex accused.  
“I love you,” Bernie said quietly.  
Alex’s breath caught in her chest. Did she hear that correctly? Had Bernie just admitted to loving her. In the present tense?  
Bernie looked across the table and smiled with a slight blush on her cheeks. Alex looked slightly stunned. Had Bernie actually rendered her momentarily speechless.  
“I’m such an idiot Alex.,” Bernie began. She wasn’t what she should say, how she was ever supposed to fix how much she had screwed up what they had but she had to try. “I treated you so badly and you didn’t deserve any of it. Fear has a lot to answer for.”  
Alex looked at her and nodded. She had never imagined when they first started being more than friends that Bernie was even capable of treating anyone, let alone her like that. When she last saw Bernie, she was heart broken, angry, upset and so many other things. But over time she had begun to realise that Bernie was scared, perhaps of who she was, or how she felt but as Bernie had just said fear can make people react in all sorts of ways, and do things they would never do in order to protect themselves.  
“Why didn’t you talk to me Bern? Why did you just run? You broke my heart and I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive you for that. I’m still not sure,” Alex said with clear irritation in her voice.  
“You won’t believe me,” Bernie said sadly.  
“Try me,” Alex said expectantly.  
“I was trying to protect you.” Alex raised her right eyebrow in disbelief. “I was scared of what I was feeling. I was completely in love with you. I had never felt like that for any other person…ever. And then I got blown up and I ended up back in Holby, back in the real world. I suddenly went from being your lover, in our little bubble in Kabul where I was so incredibly happy to being a married woman with two children I don’t feel like I know very well. I didn’t know whether I could be the person I was with you in the ‘real world’. In the civilian world. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was gay in this ‘real world’ because I wasn’t sure if I was. If I was I’d have to tell people, be judged, maybe even get thrown out of the army for being with you. So I was a coward, I thought you would be better off without me, that you wouldn’t want me if I couldn’t go back to the Army. I thought it would be easier for you to forget me if I broke it off by phone, if you never had to see me again. I thought that we could both just move on, and life would go back to how it used to be.”  
“Did you honestly think that would work?” Alex asked incredulously  
“Erm…. I don’t now but I think I convinced myself it could. That day in Holby when you walked away, you were so right. Seeing you again triggered feelings I had never lost and watching you walk away knowing I had broken your heart was the most soul destroying thing I have ever experienced. I literally stood alone in that treatment room for about 20 minutes not knowing what to do. I couldn’t imagine life without you in it. But I certainly wasn’t the person you wanted, the person you deserved. I knew I didn’t want Marcus any more, but I wasn’t ready to commit to you either, not deep down,” Bernie was trying her hardest to explain the thought process of a closeted lesbian. There was a pause. Bernie smiled as she recalled the next bit of her explanation she needed to tell Alex.  
“The day you were at Holby, I sat in the gardens with Dominic Copland and I told him about us.”  
Alex raised her eyebrow again, “You told Dr Copland about us?”  
“Yeah,” Bernie confessed. “I openly admitted to him that we had been lovers.”  
“Okay…..” Alex wasn’t sure whether to be amused or baffled.  
“I remember telling him that all I’d done since I was blown up was think of you, and how wonderful my life could be if only I was brave enough. That’s when I came and begged you to stay.”  
“And now?” Alex asked tentatively.  
“Now….I’m still as much in love with you as I was the day you first kissed me,” Bernie declared.  
Alex reached over and interlinked her fingers with Bernie’s. She could feel herself grinning and was pretty sure she looked utterly ridiculous but right now she didn’t care.  
“Are you sure?” she had to be sure. Alex really didn’t think she could cope with having her heart broken again. Bernie knew exactly what she meant without any more explanation. She never wanted to see heart broken Alex ever again.  
“Yes,” Bernie said quietly. She could make some grand gesture, spout a great long set of reasons as to why she was certain, but it wasn’t really something she felt Alex would want. She just wanted the truth.  
“Let’s get out of here,” Alex smiled. Right now the thing she wanted to do more than anything else was kiss Bernie, put her arms round her best friend and convey exactly how she was feeling. However Ukraine isn’t a very accepting country of LGBT culture so doing it in this bar wasn’t really going to go down well.

They walked back towards Bernie’s hotel. Alex didn’t really have a plan of what might happen next. Her mind was spinning from the events that had happened so far tonight. The were walking across a deserted square in central Kiev when Alex had an idea. She couldn’t see anyone around so she quickly grabbed Bernie by the wrist to stop her walking. Within seconds they were stood within inches of each other. Bernie could feel Alex’s quickened breaths blowing against her cheek, she could smell Alex’s scent. Nothing strong, just the smell of her shampoo and general musk, something that was unmistakably Alex, and something Bernie hadn’t realised she had missed until right now. There was a general city hum in the background but Bernie couldn’t hear any cars going past behind them on the street, no footsteps or noises made by other people. It was like they were alone in an entirely deserted place. The world could have stopped around them or a bomb could probably have gone off and Bernie isn’t sure they’d have noticed. Alex reached up and pushed back a rouge strand of Bernie’s curly blonde hair from her face. Her palm then resting on Bernie’s cold cheek. They slowly closed the gap between them and the moment Bernie’s lips touch her own Alex instantly felt like she had come home. It was like everything she was so scared of all those months ago seemed silly and ridiculous. Why she hadn’t felt brave enough, how she wanted anything other than this. The kiss was slow and gentle, but so incredibly laced with passion, conveying all the feelings they had been repressing for the months since they’d last seen each other. All the things they couldn’t manage to put into words. As they broke apart their foreheads rested against each other, their breathing in pants rather than the measured breaths they would otherwise have been.  
“Please tell me you’re not going back to your empty hotel room?” Bernie almost whispered.  
“Not if you don’t want me to.”  
“I want to hold you in bed and never let go,” Bernie admitted quietly.  
Alex threaded her left arm through Bernie’s right arm and almost hugged herself against it, “Yes please”.

The following morning Bernie awoke to find Alex facing her, drawing shapes across an area of bare skin at her waist.  
“I’d forgotten just how beautiful you are when you’re asleep,” Alex smiled.  
Bernie rolled her head into her pillow in an attempt to hide her face as it blushed.  
“I see you’re no better at accepting complements than you were.”  
“No,” Bernie mumbled into her pillow. “How long have you been watching me?”  
“A while,” Alex admitted in a non-committal kind of way. It might have seemed a little creepy if she had told Bernie exactly how long.  
“Bern,” Alex said in a more serious tone, causing Bernie to look at her more directly. “What happens now?”  
Bernie rolled onto her side so she was facing Alex. She lifted an arm up to stroke the skin of Alex’s cheek, occasionally brushing up against her brown hair.  
“I need to email Holby. I have some explaining to do, both to Hanssen and Serena the colleague who I ran away from. I’m done being a coward, so it’s time to start being honest with people from the start. But as far as I’m concerned my future is with you,” Bernie explained.  
“So you’re staying in Kiev?”  
“Yep, right here. With you.”  
Alex smiled, it might have taken a while, but life made sense again. She had her best friend, her soul mate, her Bernie back and this time she was never going to let her go.


End file.
